Ted Kramer is a career man for whom his work comes before his family. His wife Joanna cannot take this anymore, so she decides to leave him. Ted is now faced with the tasks of housekeeping and taking care of himself and their young son Billy. When he has learned to adjust his life to these new responsibilities, Joanna resurfaces and wants Billy back. Ted, however, refuses to give him up, so they go to court to fight for the custody of their son.

After losing his restaurant, chef CLAY MAGUIRE must start his career all over--at the bottom. Pushing forty with no "corporate skill-set", Clay enters the strange world of the Unemployable Interviewees of America. He soon meets others who share his plight--LIZ, who spent her youth traveling in the Peace Corp and now finds that experience digging wells in Bangladesh isn't exactly what corporate America is clamoring for; BOB a manufacturing engineer who lost his pension when the company went bust and now finds that 64 is too old to get hired as an administrative assistant and too young for a Wal-Mart greeter; and CHARLIE, who's job as a corporate hiring manager is so miserable that he only hires interviewees he hates because working at his company should be a form of punishment. Spurred along by the total lack of encouragement by his job counselor SAM, the self-serving "wisdom" of his homeless buddy NICK...